In his weekly Slate column, Hitch insists that the Catholic child abusers be prosecuted:
Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering? . . .
. . . Meanwhile, we should register the fact that the church can find ample room in its confessionals and its palaces for those who commit the most evil offense of all. Whether prosecuted or not, they stand condemned. But prosecution must follow, or else we admit that there are men and institutions that are above and beyond our laws.
I haven’t been following the websites this week, but have Catholic bloggers like Andrew Sullivan—or for that matter those ScienceBlogs writers who profess both Catholicism and concern for social justice—said anything about this scandal?
Sullivan has covered it quite a bit.
Repress and release. The piety of misplaced eroticism and a lack of appreciation for the fact that Freud was right.
As far as I can tell, the ScienceBlogs Catholic(s) have been completely silent about this. Why am I not surprised?
I don’t follow Catholics on scienceblogs but Andrew Sullivan has been giving it a lot of coverage (especially considering health care reform this week). An excerpt:
“But what staggers me is once again the immediate, visceral circling
of the wagons — when what is being revealed — again! — is a
pattern of criminal abuse, aided and abetted by a powerful elite, led
by the Pope himself. If this were a secular institution, the police
would move in and shut it down.
We need a statement from the Pope explaining what he knew and didn’t
know about the abuse of children — and the protection of child-
abusing priests — under his direct authority in Regensburg and
Munich. His position does not render him above the law — or above
taking personal responsibility for the crimes he was duty-bound to
discover and prosecute and for the priests he did not remove from
their positions of power.”
http://bit.ly/bjVK6w
There have been ongoing updates since then. E.g.,
http://bit.ly/cD9rRM
This is not a surprise to me. Despite disagreeing with him often (I’m a liberal atheist) he has always struck me as quite principled. And from what I’ve read in the past, he doesn’t shy away from criticizing the Catholic hierarchy.
Good for Sullivan!
Yeah, Sullivan has been very, very concious of it.
The sad part about it all is that the RCC is only using the apologies as a bit of window dressing for us in the First World because they know that the bulk of their congregation, in the Third World, never get to hear about any of the nastiness.
And those poor sods are much easier both to fleece and to control.
On the moral ‘elasticity’ of the Catholic church, older French-speaking gents would have quoted the ‘parable of doctor O’Grady’, from ‘The silence of Colonel Bramble’, by André Maurois (1885-1967). Imagine an Irish doctor, O’Grady, explaining to a Scotch Presbyterian the immoderate influence of Catholic padres in the trenches of Flanders during WW I. The story, quoting Maurois:
” A gentleman had committed a murder. He was not suspected by justice, but remorse made him a restless wanderer. One day, as he was passing an Anglican church, he felt that his secret would less of a burden if he could share it with someone, so he entered and asked the vicar to hear his confession.
The vicar was a well-educated young man, and had been at Eton and Oxford. Delighted with this rare gift from heaven, he said eagerly, ‘Most certainly, open your heart to me; you can talk to me as if I were your father.’ The other began: ‘I have killed a man.’ The vicar sprang to his feet. ‘And you come here to tell me that? Miserable murderer! I am not sure that it is not my duty as a citizen to take you to the nearest police station. In any case it is my duty as a gentleman not to keep you a moment longer under my roof.’
And the man went away. A few miles farther on he saw a Roman Catholic church. A last hope made him enter, and he knelt down behind the old ladies who were waiting by the confessional. When his turn came he discerned only the priest’s shadow, praying, with his head buried in his hands. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘I am not a Catholic, but I should like to confess to you.’ ‘I am listening, my son.’
‘Father, I have murdered.’
He waited for the effect of his dreadful revelation. In the august silence of the church the voice of the priest said simply,
‘How many times, my son?’ “
Enjoyed that excerpt so much. Thanks.
I’ve been following the letters about the issue on the websites of Irish newspapers like the ‘Irish Independent’ and the ‘Irish Times’ and have been amazed the number of times I’ve seen letters from priests invoking the New Testament story of Jesus protecting the woman by saying “let he that is without sin cast the first stone”. They seem completely oblivious to the categorical difference between someone having sex outside marriage and the behavior of a serial pedophile. They don’t seem to realize that there are some actions you can’t simply forgive and forget because to do so will almost inevitably lead to harm for other people down the line.
It reminds me of the instances where a religious relative of a murder victim says that he or she ‘forgives’ the murderer for their actions. This is often reported as a way of praising the ‘Christian’ attitude of the forgiver, despite the fact that, in practice, it is meaningless since the murderer is behind bars and the forgiveness has no bearing on their sentence. Can you imagine the same sort of praise being heaped on the forgiver if his forgiveness leads to the obligatory release of the murderer or rapist? That, essentially is what happened with the Catholic church in their response to pedophile priests. Once the abuser admits his actions in the confessional the church, following Canon law, is left with little option but to offer forgiveness and penance rather than turning him over to the authorities.
The concensus among Irish Catholics (I’m very much an ‘ex-‘) seems to be that the institutional RCC is finished but just hasn’t realised it. The Pope’s letter is considered too little too late, and misses the point of people’s outrage when it ignores the Vatican’s part in the abuse scandals and places the blame on secular society rather than an authoritiarian church with a warped view of sex.
I doubt that any rational Catholic in the western world disagrees with that position. I exclude from that group the see-no-evil apologists like Bill Donohoe, to whom America is very welcome.
Bill Donahue whined that other organisations get to deal with this sort of thing internally, so why not the Catholic Church? Because child rape is a lot like sexual harassment, apparently.
We get a slighty different line here in Ireland: the claim is that it’s unfair to target the RCC seeing how most abuse takes place in families etc.
The ‘Cosi Fan Tutte’ defence from the guardians of Eternal Truth and Morality!
PZ Myers has mentioned it too and the Carholic Church has done little to explain it’s behaviour here in Australia, where they sent their evil people here to commit the offence far from Ireland where they were first found out. Disgusting behaviour!!!
Can someone please explain to me why the bishops involved in the coverups haven’t been arrested for criminal conspiracy? I just don’t get why these people are getting a free pass just because they are religious figures. If these events involved a secular franchise of daycare centres everyone involved would be in jail. How can the police just sit by and not charge anyone?
In the U.S., it’s often because the statutes of limitations for criminal prosecutions are quite short, especially when it comes to certain kinds of child abuse. This is something that various advocacy groups are working to change (the argument there being that it often takes a child a long time to be able to talk about/report what happened to them and that the time limitation thus needs to be longer in these cases than it is for other violent/abusive crimes.)
In Ireland there has been a fair bit of talk among lawyers (and a lot among people who know absolutely no law!)aboutthe possibility of charges.
Obstruction of justice gets a mention, as does s.17 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939. That’s an interesting one that prohibits administering an oath for the purpose of concealing a crime. (The origins of that go back to the 18th century and secret societies active then)
The general view is that without unambiguous evidence of a bishop threatening consequences specifically for going to the cops, a prosecution is unlikely. There’s also an official reluctance to go down that route: public opinion tends more towards getting bishops to resign and reducing (or removing) church influence, especially over schools.
Several reflections sprung to mind:
– The RCC leader is a prima facie criminal! Or should be. I didn’t know that, but it makes sense.
– Same leader is blaming the society at large in his letter, instead of accepting blame. Indirectly blaming the victims as well, as it where.
– Hitchens in “The Great Catholic Cover-Up”: “In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked, and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing “abuse”?) [My italics.]”
In Sweden it would have been rape, not abuse. Oral sex (as well as touching sex organs, anal sex and vaginal sex) can be rape, it comes down to intent. (In principle – in practice the courts have a less than stellar record of judging on outcome instead.)
– I didn’t know that the RCC had as much as 1 % pedophile rapists (~ 4 500 abusers out of ~ 400 000 priests. Sweden, who has an abysmal record of total rapes (hopefully because of better reporting) has 46 reported rapes out of 100 000 people every year. Mostly among young people.
So Sweden would have at least perhaps 200 000 non-serial rapists out of a population of ~ 10 M over 50 years or 2 % rapists. (Actually you would like to take that over a generation, ~ 20 – 30 years, but to compare with the RCC statistics I believe 50 years should be taken.) Considering that active pedophiles is a minute part of any population, RCC statistics are truly appalling!
When my previous comment comes out of too-many-links moderation, it should have been “(~ 4 500 abusers out of ~ 400 000 priests).”
I was in home in Ireland for 2 weeks this month and caught one programme that had a panel discussing the issue. One woman who works with a victims support group and had herself been in an orphanage described how the nuns would line up children for the priest to take his pick.
She was picked out on an occasion, but as she fought back when the priest tried to abuse her, she was spared the sexual abuse but badly beaten by the nuns for not complying.
The priest just chose another child.
Such horrific behaviour on the part of people who were supposed to be protecting them.